1. Field of Invention
The field of this invention is global sale of products and services using electronic means of (a) communications, (b) data storage and retrieval, (c) taking of orders, (d) fulfillment, (e) transfers of payments, and (f) providing customer service after the sale. Both business-to-business and business-to-consumer sales are effectuated.
The present invention is a system for use by even small manufacturers to meet a long-felt need to sell their products to Buyers around the world. The term “manufacturers” is meant to include manufacturers or authorized distributors for manufacturers; and the term “Buyers” is meant to include both individuals and organizations, including other manufacturers.
A complete system, termed a Global Store, is disclosed, a system that overcomes barriers to global trade of language, culture, and nationality. The Global Store integrates communications and database software technologies, hardware infrastructure, and operating methods to market and sell products from manufacturers around the globe to Buyers in a multitude of locales around the globe. Stated another way, The Global Store assembles and operates various subsystems to provide the infrastructure for manufacturers to use a new channel of global commerce, a Virtual Channel.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Overview of the Legacy Channel and of Conventional E-Commerce
Typically, manufacturers, working on their own, market their products effectively only to one specific population of Buyers defined by a country, language, and culture. There are obvious exceptions seen in giant international companies such as Coca Cola (RTM) or Adidas (RTM), but those exceptions represent a tiny fraction of what could be done, and will be done, as even small manufacturers surmount barriers to international trade.
For manufactures who do not have their own giant global marketing system, a presently available “Legacy Channel” for global commerce is manned by an array of players (e.g., exporters, importers, wholesalers, and retailers) who provide a multitude of necessary functions of marketing, sales, payment processing, delivery, and customer service. Manufacturers could conceivably market their products to Buyers around the world by performing all of the above necessary functions themselves, but practical considerations usually cause the manufacturer to outsource many functions of global commerce to the Legacy Channel.
In the future, however, the Legacy Channel will be largely replaced by the new Virtual Channel. That revolutionary change will provide ready access to global markets for even small manufacturers. Furthermore, those manufacturers will be able to maintain control, like never before, over the marketing of their products.
Revolutionary changes come about by a confluence of events. For example, a revolutionary use of rocket ships for manned exploration of space in the mid-Twentieth Century resulted from a confluence of political motivations and technological advances that included, but were not restricted to, international competition between superpowers and advances in rocketry. Improvements in space-age materials, rocket engines, computers, and other technologies also set the stage for the revolutionary change.
A similar situation now exists in the area of global trade. A confluence of recognized needs and new technologies now sets the stage for a revolutionary change in how manufacturers bring their products to markets around the world.
Advances in communications and information technology and their associated standards have made geography a much less salient factor in trade than in prior years. Electronic communications at the speed of light enables one to purchase a product on the other side of the world as quickly as across the street—even more quickly should one decide to walk across that street to make the purchase. Furthermore, increasing use of English as a de facto language of commerce and increasing access to good, real-time translation technology will inevitably lower language barriers.
The Global Store system, described here, is a method that integrates revolutionary and evolutionary developments into a new system of global trade in the Virtual Channel. Only in the very recent past have the following compelling trends and powerful developments conjoined to permit the construction and operation of a complete and integrated system of global trade to meet long-felt needs:                1) a quickly growing population of Internet users around the world who are ready to shop online 24 hours per day and 365 days per year,        2) Websites to provide specialized functions such as online payments, online currency conversion tables, universal tax tables, and parcel tracking,        3) third-party fulfillment services to support regional and global distribution,        4) “pull” online marketing that allows customers greater opportunities to customize the products they purchase, as compared with the “push” marketing of ready-made products that is characteristic of brick-and-mortar retail channels,        5) international agreements to eliminate tariffs on imports,        6) globalization of sources of supply,        7) efficiencies and economies of scale resulting from consolidation of marketing functions across markets,        8) establishment of ubiquitous delivery services,        9) availability of escrow services to assuage concerns of online Buyers about completing purchases after shopping baskets are filled,        10) growth in telecommuting to work and in home-based internet businesses, allowing participants to avoid driving and, thereby, less occasion to stop at brick-and-mortar stores to shop,        11) increased global travel and increased access to information from around the world using wide-band communications, thereby increasing interest in products from far-away locales,        12) consolidation of warehousing and distribution centers for quicker and more efficient fulfillment of orders,        13) manufacturers' need to retain brand control by offering increasing levels of customer support from a single point,        14) technology to implement Web-based multi-language global marketing systems using newly invoked international standards, locale-specific stored SQL procedures, integrated multi-locale Web-based relational data bases, and Unicode, and        15) integration of manufacturers' Business-to-Consumer sales with their Business-to-Business strategies for procuring supplies, offering a means to couple direct online customer sales with procurements, thus completing the transition to a completely integrated “Pull” model: A custom product is created to satisfy a Buyer's needs, and suppliers are enabled to provide necessary Business-to-Business products and services on a timely basis.        
Pent-up pressures for globalization have produced numerous examples of conventional e-commerce businesses attempting to expand globally. These businesses generally meet the challenge to provide information in multiple languages and across cultures by cloning Websites from one locale to another—reproducing some of the design of the original Website and some of the content. This multi-headed e-commerce approach is a crude interim step that fails to meet the emerging needs of manufacturers who desire global sales. Loss of the efficiencies and economies of a truly global approach make the prices of their products less competitive than should be possible, and there is the additional problem of entering and maintaining current and accurate information across multiple databases.
In conventional e-commerce it is not uncommon for the unscrupulous to sell brand name goods through Websites when they are not authorized to do so. In response, manufacturers desire to maintain better control of prices, marketing information about their products, sales, fulfillment, and customer service—all in a global context and, ideally, from a single integrated site.
Buyers are reluctant to make international purchases when they fear that they will have no practical recourse if they pay for a product but either do not receive it or find the product is not acceptable. What is needed for a hesitant Buyer is an escrow service that will complete settlement only after the product has been successfully delivered and the Buyer is satisfied.
Many conventional e-commerce Websites have sought to sell products globally, but few if any have made a serious commitment to globalization by providing good translations in multiple languages. (So far, machine translations are so lacking in accuracy and idiomatic expression that they are likely to inspire mirth rather than confidence in a Buyer.) Furthermore, no site offers products of a multitude of manufacturers along with customer support across more than one language, support that is needed for Buyers to be well informed about international shipping, duties, warranties, currency conversion, repair centers, and other issues important to Buyers.
Conventionally, for both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar businesses, separate databases are established to support production, marketing, sales, and accounting. Information changes in one business database often are not reflected in all of the other databases. Further information vital to a customer, such as parcel tracking, would require leaving the e-commerce site to access such a service on yet another system. Customer support is critically lacking in brick-and-mortar businesses and also is missing in most e-commerce businesses. What is missing is the ability to place in the hands of the customer the ability to go to a single location and, interactively, to obtain an answer to a question pertaining to a product or to an order.
Departing from conventional e-commerce approaches, the ideal e-commerce model, from the manufacturers' viewpoint, is to sell globally using a system allowing                1) a single database of product descriptions in common format to be translated for Buyers across different languages,        2) Buyers to come to a single, authorized Global Store with a single Web URL address,        3) global sales across many locales using an information system operating in a multitude of languages to provide product information assembled for each specific locale,        4) a generalized, reliable approach to shipping, currency conversion, settlements, and customer support,        5) global sales without losing brand control,        6) minimal delays in bringing new products to market or old products to new markets,        7) the manufacturer to take orders for custom-made products, using a “pull” method,        8) fulfillment from a plurality of strategically-located fulfillment centers around the Globe, and        9) Buyers to get information on the Buyers' transaction history and to find links to manufacturer's support from a single Website.        
Prior art in the area of electronic commerce has not yet provided a flexible system to use a single, central database to support sales to Buyers around the world. Rather, prior art is exemplified by the design of large international e-commerce companies like Amazon and eBay that clone existing non-global electronic systems of marketing (e.g., Amazon.com) into similar but separate systems that serve various locales (e.g., Amazon.co.uk). Products are separately catalogued and inventoried in the separate, cloned online businesses serving a particular language and locale. Efficiencies and economies of scale are largely lost when marketing becomes thus fragmented. Furthermore, Buyers lose the benefit of an expanded selection of products coming from all locales.
In summary, the Legacy Channel of global trade is not practical for most businesses. Furthermore, as will be described below, the promise of global e-commerce in a Virtual Channel of global trade to supplant the Legacy Channel has not yet been realized; efforts have thus far failed sufficiently to integrate existing art and new art to capitalize on new trends and developments. The invention disclosed here overcomes the shortcomings of prior art by making e-commerce a viable method of global trade for even small manufacturers.
E-Commerce and Database Technology
The Global Store system uses a multi-version database to provide a new way of providing language/locale-specific marketing information and sales of products to Buyers around the globe. Prior art, as seen in patents cited below, provide opportunities for Buyers to (a) view a product and be referred to a seller or (b) view and purchase a product over the Internet, with or without use of a referrer Website. However, no prior art takes advantage of (a) multi-version, locale-specific innovations in marketing, (b) use of Referral Websites from a multitude of locales, combined with (c) other Ancillary Resources to offer truly global sales over the Internet.
Single-Point Global E-Commerce
Prior art has not solved the problem of marketing globally from a single-point. Major players in global e-commerce (e.g., AOL, Yahoo, and Amazon) have adopted a country-by-country or a region-by-region strategy in order to adapt to Buyers' languages and cultures.
In a statement quoted in a Wall Street Journal article, Aug. 01, 2000, a Yahoo executive declared that Yahoo would consider itself unsuccessful if Yahoo were considered an American company two years from then. Yahoo and other e-commerce companies have discovered that their widely recognized brand names are, in themselves, not sufficient for attracting global e-commerce business. Buyers have been found, however, to be attracted to e-commerce sites that cater to local interests and culture. Stated another way, Buyers are more comfortable and confident about buying from a business they do not perceive as foreign.
Needed is a system to provide culture-sensitive and language-adapted marketing, sales, and customer service content to Buyers, doing so in a way that takes advantage of the efficiencies and economies of using a single point of operations. Prior art, described as follows, fails to meet that criterion:
Chelliah et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,710,887“Computer System and Method for Electronic Commerce,” 1998) disclose a multi-vendor shopping system. They describe a method for a presentation to a customer of at least one supplier for selection. Similarly, items from a supplier or suppliers can be displayed for the customer to view. Associated with a supplier of such items is an item database including information on presented items. A pricing means allows reception of information from the item database to determine the cost associated with a presented item. In addition, a customer information database stores information relating to the customer. The system also comprises means for creating a customer-monitoring object for each customer. The Commerce Subsystems include: an Incentives Subsystem; an Observations Subsystem; an Order Fulfillment Subsystem; a Participant Subsystem; a Payment Handler; a Pricing Subsystem; a Product Database; a Promotions Subsystem; a Sales Representative Subsystem; a Redemption Registry; a Security Subsystem; a Shipping Subsystem; and a Tax Subsystem.
The patent by Chelliah et al discloses a relatively comprehensive e-commerce system operating from a single point, but still it fails to meet a basic need of global commerce to provide alternative versions of marketing information for Buyers across linguistic and cultural groups; it can only accommodate Buyers who speak a given language.
The same limitation is seen in the recent patent by Wong (U.S. Pat. No. 6,515,690 “Integrated business to-business Web commerce and business automation system,” 2000). Wong makes a strong case for the advantages in efficiency and speed of using a single, integrated database for businesses, and especially Web-based businesses. However, his patent makes no accommodation to differences in language or customs for users of the database. The Global Store system disclosed here overcomes that limitation. Also disclosed are other innovations not seen in the Wong patent, the Chelliah et al patent, or in other prior art:                (1) a clear and efficient way to categorize products to be displayed to Buyers,        (2) an order-taking shopping cart subsystem that encourages Buyers to complete a purchase transaction by keeping products selected for purchase in the Buyer's view and by interactively involving the Buyer in a purchasing process, and        (3) a means to provide comprehensive customer service information from a single convenient point.        
Accommodating Buyers using a diversity of languages and additional needed innovations are discussed below in the context of related prior art.
Prior Art Using a Single Multilingual Database
Prior art has not provided a solution for global e-commerce from a single point, but several patents have described innovations in database technology that might be used to accommodate visitors to an e-commerce Website when they speak a diversity of preferred languages:                1) Pet's patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,912 “Method of Efficiency and Flexibility Storing, Retrieving, and Modifying Data in Any Language Representation,” 1998) discloses a method of storing, retrieving, and modifying multilingual data in a database by creating data records in a user-definable language representation. Each data record has an identifier, where each data record includes data fields and attribute fields, where each data field and attribute field is identified by a name. Each data field and attribute field is stored on a separate line in a data item table along with the data record identifier, the field name or attribute name, and a language representation identifier. A data record, data field, or attribute field is retrievable in the language representation used to store the same. Modifying, adding, or deleting the data record, the data field, or the attribute field may be accomplished using a user-definable language representation where the language representation may be different from the language representation used to store the item.        2) A patent by Malatesta et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,442,782 “Providing Information from a Multi-Lingual Database of Language-Independent and Language-Dependent Items,” 1995) discloses a method of internationalizing a database by storing data in one language, referred to as a base language, along with copies of the data in one or more languages other than the base language. The base language is relative to the user. That is, a base language for one user may be different from the base language of another user.        
The above two patents suggest the feasibility of providing from a single database information to users who speak different languages. However, in neither of these patents is there disclosed a system that comprehensively accommodates to the needs of a Buyer to view, purchase, and receive products from around the world, using the Buyer's own language in a manner that will not seem foreign to the Buyer. Needed is a method for multiple versions of marketing information to be automatically and transparently delivered from a single database. That database, when incorporated into a complete system for global e-commerce, would thereby accommodate Buyers from around the world
Determining a Visitor's Preferred Language at a Multilingual Website
In a recent patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,598 “Method of Providing One of a Plurality of Web Pages Mapped to a Single Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Based on Evaluation of a Condition,” 2000) Danneels suggested that various language versions from a single source on the Web could be delivered selectively to viewers. The selection is based on information transferred from the viewers' Browsers along with a request to view Web page content. Unfortunately, that approach is not valid unless a viewers' Browser is programmed to send preferred language and preferred character set information along with a request. Given that Browsers are not uniformly programmed to send that information, the Danneels' approach is not a strong contender as a general solution for automatically and transparently identifying a preferred language for a viewer.
Another approach is suggested in a patent by Levy (U.S. Pat. No. 5,944,790 “Method and Apparatus for Providing a Web Site Having a Home Page that Automatically Adapts to User Language and Customs,” 1999). Levy presents a system whereby a generic home page is delivered in various language versions based on the location code of the viewer's node address. Thereafter, the viewer is given the opportunity to specify the language to be used for viewing other Web pages. There are several problems with this approach, as follow:                1) An extra step requiring the visitor to specify a language choice is introduced prior to the viewer accessing the content desired by the Client.        2) No provision is made to determine the character set used by the viewer's Browser.        3) This approach is not transparent with respect to language usage determination. Because the viewer is involved in language selection, there is an obvious limitation to making the viewer comfortable that the site is not foreign.        4) Levy fails to show how the viewer's node address is actually used to determine the viewer's presumed locale and preferred language.        
The limitations seen in the patents by Danneels and Levy could be overcome when a preferred language is determined by a Buyer's use of a locale-specific Referral Website.
Use of Referral Websites
Prior art, described below, has described use of referral Websites, but none has used the locale of Referral Websites to determine a viewer's locale and preferred language.
Harrington (U.S. Pat. No. 5,895,454 “Integrated Interface for Vendor/Product Oriented Internet Websites,” 1999) describes a referral Website that has access to a database of products/services that are available from a multitude of vendors in remote locations. Buyers can access and purchase products in the database, doing so via an interface provided by the referral Website to the vendors' remote Websites. After the Buyer interactively connects with one or more of the remote vendor network sites, the user selects products/services from the information provided on the remote vendor network site. The selection of a particular product/service triggers a transaction notification that records the Buyer's selection and associated financial transaction data, which is transmitted to the database and associated database interface. Harrington's design does not allow for global sales because her referral Website only puts Buyers using a single language in contact with a vendor using the same language. Thus, there is no attention paid to even the first step necessary for global sales.
Bezos et al (U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,141 “Internet-based Customer Referral System,” 2000) describe an Internet-based customer referral system that allows referral Websites to receive commissions on sales made to Buyers when they refer those Buyers to an e-commerce Website. These referral Websites are not identified, however, by the language and locale with which they are associated. Therefore, this design does not allow Buyers to get customized treatment that caters to their language or culture. All Buyers coming to the e-commerce Website from referral Websites see a site that is oriented toward a single language and culture. Needed is a system whereby a Buyer's use of a Referral Website (among many Referral Websites serving multiple locales) is used to determine and accommodate to the Buyer's preferred language and to the customs of the Buyer's locale.
Use of Shopping Carts for E-Commerce Websites
Buyers use shopping carts on e-commerce Websites to store a list of products selected for later purchase. There is a significant problem, however; very often, a Buyer places one or more items in a shopping cart but then abandons the cart without completing a purchase. In a study described in the Dallas Morning News, page 4 D, Oct. 2, 2000, Datamonitor, a New York-based market research firm, found that 78% of all online shopping carts are abandoned before checkout.
Any improvement made in the percentage of shopping cart users who go on to complete a purchase would have tremendous positive influence on the success of an e-commerce site.
Unfortunately, prior art has failed to incorporate good, common sense sales techniques into the design of shopping cart functions.
The following patents are discussed in light of certain failures in support of the sales process—limitations that are overcome in the present invention:
Levine et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,745,681 “Stateless Shopping Cart for the Web,” 1998) disclosed a shopping cart system that allows a hidden shopping cart file to be placed in a page sent to a Buyer that displays products for purchase. The Buyer can toggle the hidden file into view. This elegant technological design allows use of a shopping cart without opening a new window. Though Levine et al show technical innovativeness, the use of a hidden file is exactly the opposite of what is needed to stimulate payment for selected items. It is actually better to keep a shopping cart file displayed in an open frame to remind the Buyer about the products selected. Hidden from view, the selected products are more easily forgotten and abandoned.
Yonezawa et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,973 “Shopping Basket Presentation Method for an Online Shopping System,” 1999) provide a persisting open shopping cart window from the outset of a Buyer's viewing of products, but there is a failure to provide total cost, including shipping. This is a significant failure because not knowing total cost means that a Buyer does not have the information needed to make a buying decision. It would actually be an advantage to involve the Buyer in a purchasing process by asking the Buyer to provide a destination for a purchased product, thereby allowing the calculation of shipping costs and total costs. That sort of interaction would help to cement in the mind of the Buyer the Buyer's interest in buying the product.
Use of a Personalized Web Page for Comprehensive Customer Service
Relevant prior art to this invention would describe comprehensive customer service from a single point with one or more of the following features:                1) Access by a Buyer to a customer service Web page in the Buyer's own language and in the proper character set,        2) Dynamically current, event-driven provision of information from a single, integrated database,        3) Personalization by allowing a Buyer to access information about past transactions, current orders, and parcel tracking,        4) Access to after-the-sale information about purchased products, including recalls, repair centers, accessories, warranties, and instructions,        5) Information about contacting customer service representatives, and        6) Opportunities to participate in any current customer retention programs.        
In totality, the above features would serve to enable the Buyer with a personalized Web-based Customer Information System, a level of service and integration that exceeds prior art. The following patents touch on one or more of the above features. No one patent describes a comprehensive approach.
Providing Buyers' access to a Web-based business' database system is a step demonstrated in a patent by Purcell (U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,807 “Automated and independently accessible inventory information exchange system,” 1999). Purcell discloses a method for controlling the collection, processing and dissemination of information by a host regarding product and service availability. The method includes the step of establishing a host-operated information management system. Electronic communication connections to host-approved sellers of products and services are granted limited electronic access to the information management system. Each approved seller has a self-initiated, exclusive capability to access that seller's inventory information that is maintained on the information management system for adding, amending and deleting portions of the seller's inventory information. The seller's inventory information is analyzed and assimilated into a Buyer's listing of products and services available through the information management system to potential Buyers. Host-approved Buyers of products and services are granted limited electronic access to the information management system so that each approved Buyer may access the Buyer's listing for reviewing products and services of interest to that Buyer.
Perkowski (U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,979 “Method of and System for Finding and Serving Consumer Product Related Information Over the Internet Using Manufacturer Identification Numbers,” 2000) discloses a Web-based method for finding and displaying consumer product-related information. A database serving subsystem stores manufacturer identification numbers assigned to manufacturers of consumer products, home-page specifying URLs symbolically linked to the identification numbers, universal product numbers (UPNs) assigned to consumer products made by the manufacturers, and product-information specifying URLs symbolically linked to the UPNs. During operation, a Client subsystem transmits to the database serving subsystem a request for information that includes the UPN assigned to the consumer product on which product-related information is being sought. The database serving subsystem automatically compares the UPN against the stored manufacturer's identification numbers and automatically returns to the Client subsystem one or more of URLs symbolically linked to the UPN if URLs have been symbolically linked to the UPN within the database serving subsystem. However, if no URLs have been symbolically linked to the UPN, then the database serving subsystem automatically returns the home-page specifying URL symbolically linked to the manufacturer's identification number contained within the UPN in the request. By virtue of this novel search mechanism based on manufacturers' identification numbers, Client subsystems are automatically provided with the home-page of the manufacturer's World Wide Web (WWW) site in situations where product-information specifying URLs have not yet been symbolically linked with the UPN on any one of the manufacturer's products. By this method, consumers may gain product information or, at least, information about a manufacturer when the consumer has the UPN code for a product of interest and the UPN and linked information has been made part of the database accessed by the consumer. Though this system makes clever use of UPNs and the Web to find information about some products, it does not enable a consumer with a guaranteed way of accessing product information for any given product that a consumer may have purchased. Furthermore, there is no provision to make information available in a language understood by the consumer.
Wong (U.S. Pat. No. 6,515,690 “Integrated Business to-Business Web Commerce and Business Automation System,” 2000) argues convincingly for the benefits of ready access to a single, integrated database for all workers inside a Web-centric business; and he includes the customer in the list of beneficiaries. Furthermore, a purchaser is allowed access to the database to check out important information: “Customers can retrieve previous quote records and view order and shipment status via the Web. . . . Parts tracking saves employee time that would otherwise be spent responding to customer inquiries, and also contributes to customer satisfaction through the convenient availability of timely information.”
Though Wong describes an integrated business system in many respects, neither he nor others have yet described a system that optimizes a customer's access to relevant information. That is especially true when customers may vary in the languages they understand. Still needed, for either a business-to-business Buyer or an individual Buyer, is ready access to pertinent information at a language-compatible, single point. Pertinent information would include order status, shipment status, histories of prior transactions, warranties, return policies, and other information that could answer many questions for a Buyer without the Buyer ever needing to contact a customer service representative. That access would reduce both aggravation to the Buyer and costs to the seller. Furthermore, that information should be offered in the Buyer's own language. When a Buyer does contact a representative, any questions are likely to be resolved most quickly and with least misunderstanding when the Buyer and the representative are both able to review the same records on their respective computer screens.
Prior Art of Product Organization and Selection Using Menus
Zellweger (U.S. Pat. No. 5,630,125 “Method and apparatus for information management using an open hierarchical data structure,” 1998) discloses a method for finding products for purchase, using an open hierarchical data structure. The invention includes an Application Generator, the Distribution files generated by the Application Generator, and a Retrieval system that accesses the Distribution files. The Retrieval system uses data in the Distribution files to configure an Information System that runs stand-alone on a desktop computer. The information management system of the invention uses an open hierarchical data structure for classifying information objects and providing a menu access to them. The open hierarchical data structure of Zellweger's invention includes multiple pathways to the same information object. Multiple paths can be used to support synonyms and to clarify word meanings within a context, thereby overcoming retrieval problems associated with conventional word-matching technologies. The Distribution files include data related to the menu system and the configuration of the Information System as well as data associated with the information objects. The Retrieval system guides an end-user to information objects in the Distribution files by generating successive selection menus in accordance with the open hierarchical data structure. Also disclosed is an embodiment of the invention that can be used to manage and distribute product information to Buyers in the form of an electronic catalog. Buyers use the custom features of an Information System generated by the Application module to locate products, generate orders for the products, and transmit orders electronically to a vendor of the products.
Zellweger's patent provides suppliers of products with a lot of flexibility when authoring hierarchies to be used by Buyers to find products. However, that same flexibility can cause confusion when applied across suppliers. When a plurality of suppliers could organize product information in a plurality of ways, the resulting structure of a combined hierarchy would not lend itself to efficient finding of products. Furthermore, should different suppliers present their products in a combined hierarchy but in different languages, the Buyer would be truly confused and lost. Therefore, Zellweger's patent cannot be readily applied to the problem of helping Buyers find products offered by a myriad of manufacturers; and, furthermore, Zellweger does not attempt to deal with the problem of presenting menus in various languages to accommodate Buyers around the world.
Consentino et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,055,515 “Enhanced tree control system for navigating lattices data structures and displaying configurable lattice-node labels,” 1991) describe a display and navigation system. That system presents hierarchical data in an enhanced tree presentation control that blends the ease-of-use character of the familiar “tree presentation control” with a technique for navigating more complex lattice data structures. At the same time, the system provides more node information by displaying configured lattice-node labels along with the node's name. A primary objective of the invention is to facilitate building, maintaining and using a multiple inheritance taxonomy such as a product catalog data base by means of a multi-navigation path browsing system, which is made possible through the capability of this system's multiple inheritance capability.
The patent by Consentino et al provides an efficient and clear method of displaying a very limited number of products for selection, too limited a number to efficiently organize and display the thousands of products that would be offered at a Global Store. Furthermore, no provision is made in this patent to accommodate Buyers wanting to use a variety of native languages to find products.
Character Sets and Use of Unicode
Shakib et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,213, “Multilingual Storage and Retrieval,” 1998) describe a method for storing and retrieving information in multiple languages and multiple character sets in a computer system. Each language has at least one character set, or code page, that is required to display information. Each character set can include all of the characters used by the respective language (e.g., the letters of the English alphabet or the symbols of Kanji). However, more than one language may use the same character set. Consequently, each language also has language-specific rules for displaying information. The language-specific rules are used for sorting the information.
In some existing computer systems, each processor/storage device only supports a single character set. For example, a server in a Client/server network stores and supports a database. The database is stored in a single character set. A Client requesting information from the database may receive the information only in the single character set. Also, a sort of fields in the database may be created only in the single character set.
In other existing computer systems, all of the information is stored in a universal character set. Using the Client/server example, all information on the network is stored in a universal character set, e.g., Unicode. When a Client requests information, it is converted from Unicode into the Client-selected character set.
Unicode, and other universal character sets, use two bytes to represent each character. Many character sets that support specific languages use only one byte to represent each character.
The method invented by Shakib et al and made available by the Microsoft Corporation has yet to have been adapted and extended for use in a comprehensive global e-commerce system.
Art of Internet Communications for E-commerce Transactions
In general, Web servers are stateless with respect to Client transactions. In other words, at the HTTP protocol level, each transaction (e.g., request for an HTML file) is separate from all others. In other common networking system protocols, a Client might initialize a connection to the server, conduct a series of requests from the server and receive information for each request, and then terminate the connection from the server; and the entire exchange, from the initialization to the termination of the connection, would be considered a session which may comprise a transaction. In such systems, the Client/server connection may be considered to be in one of several different states at any instance, depending on the nature of the requests and responses and their order. Such systems require state information to be saved by the server and also, usually, by the Client. Furthermore, time outs and other connection-failure strategies are required. The stateless nature of the Web simplifies the server and Client architectures.
The Internet has developed into a convenient medium by which consumers can purchase goods and services. The ability to purchase goods over the Internet is sometimes provided by software applications known as a “shopping basket” (or “cart”). A shopping basket application, which commonly executes on a World Wide Web (WWW or Web) site of a product manufacturer or retailer, generally provides a virtual store in which a customer can view descriptions of and purchase various products electronically. A shopping basket application generally allows a customer to add products to or delete products from a virtual shopping basket and specify various attributes, such as quantity, size, color, etc. The customer's selections are generally stored in a database associated with the Website. When the customer is ready to purchase the contents of the shopping basket, he may click on a hypertext link labeled “Purchase Contents of Shopping Basket”, for example, which causes the customer to be prompted to enter billing information (i.e., name, address, and credit card number) and to confirm the transaction.
Conventional Art for Use in Global Electronic Commerce
Certain art used in electronic commerce is conventional and well known. Prior art, however, does not encompass a comprehensive global electronic commerce system that combines both innovative art and the following conventional art:                1) Automated Communications: Interfaces for E-Mail notifications,        2) Cookies,        3) Payment Processing,        4) Tax Computing Service,        5) Parcel Tracking,        6) Currency conversion, and        7) Calculation and Display of Shipping Costs        